Indie dev removes AI voice lines from game after backlash, offers refunds

Indie developer Paolo Pedercini has removed AI-generated voice lines from his game Future? No Thanks! after backlash, despite previously calling generative AI "anti-human and anti-art." He is offering refunds to players who feel betrayed by the technology's use. Pedercini, known as Mollieindustria, replaced the text-to-speech lines with human actor recordings made earlier this year, which he initially rejected for being less humorous. He also used a "tiny fraction" of AI code for debugging, defending the choice as satire of generative AI, though critics found this inconsistent with the game's ecosocialist themes. In a follow-up post, Pedercini claimed the game is only "0.001% worse" without the AI lines and accused undisclosed studios of secretly using AI for coding. He vowed his next project will be "completely hand-coded," while comparing the backlash to past harassment he faced during GamerGate.